Posted on 06/17/2015 2:49:43 PM PDT by NRx
“The practice of yoga has no place in the lives of Christians,” was the announcement made by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece in response to the International Day of Yoga, which was established by the United Nations in 2014.
The Holy Synod argues that since yoga is a fundamental aspect of Hinduism, it cannot be practiced by Christians because it is contrary to the Christian faith. And because of that it cannot be considered as just a “form of exercise.”
The official announcement further states that the Church of Greece respects the freedom of religious belief but claims is has a responsibility in order to avoid developing a “climate of religious syncretism.”
I don’t get this at all. If the meditation mumbo-jumbo is taken out of Yoga, you are left with a bunch of stretching exercises. Really good stretching exercises, actually.
I love TaiChi because it is so slow ... and I cannot move that fluidly so slowly ... and I like it because it forces me to try
Yoga has kept me limber and my aging body in pretty decent shape. The exercises are not religious, it’s the frame of mind of the practitioner, and their approach that can bring in a religious aspect. To me, it’s simply great exercise.
I often pray my best when in a downward dog or other various stretches .
Lose the Hindu chants, substitute Christian prayer and one has a great religious workout.
“The positions are in the shape of hindu gods.”
So what! It doesn’t mean you’re praying to them! That’s ridiculous!
There is no Hinduism without yoga. And no yoga without Hinduism.
Oh, please! You're starting to sound like the HuffPo comments section.
Yoga isn't about fitness, it's religious rituals. And actually there are churches that host this practice. It's no different then letting a muslim lead the prayers at the church.
MUST BREATHING HAVE A RELIGION OR A PRAYER?
By Padma Rao Sundarji
Editorial
The Pioneer
Friday, June 12, 2015
Yoga is a wonderful exercise for the body and the mind. It must not be linked to a particular religion or belief. Yoga teachers mustn’t insist on religious invocations as being part of the various asanas
First, outdoor sports as a kid, then inline skating with my son. I have exercised all my life. When the weather didn’t permit it and as I grew older, I began to frequent gyms. Or, simply put on an exercise video in my living room. Then came Group X classes and the fun of training with like-minded people and to music: rock, raga, beat, bhangra. Even in my fifties, there is nothing to describe the joy of spin-cycling awake my slothful carcass at the crack of dawn every day.
But somehow and all through these decades, I stayed away from yoga. I concede that it may have been youthful idiocy. For and in the 1970s and 1980s, anything that came out of the West was hipper than something as home-baked as yoga.
Of course, we gradually realised that most of the ‘Western’ work-out routines like aerobics, incorporated yoga in one way or another, while giving the asanas different names. So there was the downward dog, the butterfly, the cat or the cow pose. (If India is the home of yoga, America is the mother of marketing). There’s sweat yoga, power yoga, sufi yoga. There’s even doga: for dogs.
But ironically — and hypocritically on our part — America brought yoga back to India. By the nineties, other Lulu Lemon-clad urban elite and I began to take a fresh look at the ancient form of exercise. And gradually added an hour of studio yoga to our spinning, kickboxing and step-aerobic routines.
My newfound enthusiasm soon put me on a search for the ‘real thing’. I enrolled for a beginner’s course at a well-known traditional yoga centre and soon graduated to its daily ‘open sessions’.
But in about a month, I had stopped and returned to Pilates in the old fitness studio. The ongoing yoga campaign by the Government of India made me realise why I quit.
Yoga is, without doubt, a great mind and body workout. BUT it is the WAY yoga is traditionally taught in India, all contortions through the prism of religion, that had turned me off the centre I frequented.
The open sessions were attended by all kinds of people: travellers from other countries, Sikhs, Muslims, Christian Indians, some Jewish Israelis, possibly even rationalists and atheists. But unmindful of this widespread representation of all kinds of faiths, the sessions always began and ended with prayers; in Sanskrit and addressed exclusively to our Hindu pantheon.
The Ganapathi Vandana is powerful and philosophical, as is the immense Gayatri Mantra.
But some things niggled. I am a Hindu from a traditional, not conservative, family of the freedom-fighting generation and spirit. In my grandparents’ home, my granny would commune with and grumble about the family to the entire pantheon every morning, polishing a diya here, wiping a statuette there, leafing through well-thumbed books of bhajans and muttering invocations in a reverent drone to the silent but smiling portraits on the flower-strewn pedestal. Nobody forced me to participate.
Only on the odd occasion of a festival, would we be all invited to participate and take the arti. Meekly, I would say I knew only the words of the prayers we had learned at school. “Never mind! Any prayer will do! Just sing!” my grandmother would snort. So I would find myself telling Krishna that I wished his name were hallowed and his kingdom came, his will be done. Heads around me stayed bowed in prayer, nobody sniggered (except my tiresome siblings).
It was a magnificent generation of Indians, the last of the true ‘seculars’. Nobody accused the missionary schools we attended of trying to ‘convert’ us. In truth, the latter never did. Catechism classes were not for Hindu kids, nuns and brothers hoisted the flag and sang our Sanskrit anthem lustily and proudly on all national holidays. We were not forced to sing Abide With Me, just to set aside time for a bit of spirituality, before tackling the first dreaded algebra class of the day.
But in the open yoga class, I had watched non-Hindus and many foreigners twitch, mumble and twist their tongues around those Sanskrit words. If the yoga teachers thought they were getting a solid soul-cleansing before the asanas, they was badly mistaken.
It began to annoy me intensely. Why were we all here? Primarily to exercise. So what place did prayer — be it of any religion — have, in what ought to be an hour of stretching? How could breathing have a faith? And even if one were to go by the semi-scientific theory of the benefits of the ‘Om’ mantra on the respiratory system, why could not everyone simply choose their favourite meme, or sound, or indeed prayer of their own religion if thus inclined, or none at all?
Why couldn’t a Sikh yogi mutter Wahe Guru, a Christian Praise the Lord, a Muslim theazaan, while slithering into a surya namaskar or wobbling in a tree pose?
On the other hand, why are Muslims today getting prickly about the ‘names’ of the asanas? Since when did Sanskrit mean Hindu? Since when did promoting an indigenous exercise form become a sneaky attempt to convert to Hinduism? Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living has the following on its website:
“The regular practice of Surya Namaskar improves circulation, maintains health and helps one remain disease-free.” But does the cardio-vascular system respond to Hindu prayer alone?
Does yoga ‘belong’ only to India’s religious majority? Or to anyone at all? Was it not, much like the deep philosophy and astoundingly advanced world-view that comprises our great ancient texts, ultimately intended for the benefit of all mankind?
I quit practising yoga because I got no answers. The one-year-old Modi Government has performed admirably well on all counts. It continues to go from achievement to achievement. But it should well and truly admonish Hindu Right-wing motormouths within its larger fold when they start ‘possessing’ yoga. The ‘sickulars’ who outrightly reject yoga as a ‘Hindu’ concept should hold their idiocy too.
And by the way: Kids need the outdoors, they must kick a ball, play cricket, get out in the open air. Let’s stop this obsession with bans and now — impositions that all kids must practise yoga in school every day.
Dear Mr Modi, yoga is an amazing, solidly scientific and magnificent form of exercise. But nobody is asking you to compulsorily practise Krav Maga every day, are they?
If we want to call ourselves the world’s largest democracy, it’s time we started behaving like one.
News from idealmedia.com
http://archive.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/must-breathing-have-a-religion-or-a-prayer.html
It’s exercise, fer cryin’ out loud.
You can safely ignore the wierdos who chant.
Is golf compatible?
Ding, Ding, Ding, we have a winner. I took it over 30 years ago and the teacher looked way younger than her 60+ years, it was a fountain for her longevity. We had an Air Force Academy Cadet in the class, strong as an ox and wanted to cross train, Good gosh, established religions are worried about global warming and yoga and not be-heading's in the ME? Are we living in a parallel universe?
I am an ordained minister and your words display an apalling lack of understanding of who Jesus Christ was and what he gave us
The Christian faith is about The Spirit, not the Laws. You sound like a disgruntled Pharisee or Saducee whining because Jesus gave us an individual path to God, not through them. Take a walk in the word and open your eyes. Just because a form of body relaxation was integrated into a non Christian practice does not make it UNHOLY. If I follow this idiotic premise then if a Pagan wore silk to his church and then a Christian did you all would be here self righteously saying it is a pagan thing so you are guilty. Rinse and repeat. Just to open your eyes wide look in the Bible for the passage about NOT PUTTING A STONE IN YOUR BROTHERS PATH.
Simply put, if you do not eat pork and are invited by a friend to a BBQ and all he is serving is pork and he knows you will not eat it, he is in a way saying eat pork or go hungry. He has placed a condition on you forcing you to make a choice that in truth he has sinned. God says he made everything holy and so any attempt to leverage people with this kind of malarkey is outright shameful
If you or the Pope (False God = NEVER MENTIONED in the New Testament as a function even contemplated. But then if you go back in the history of the Catholic “religion” it is a combination of Spiritual and Pagan churches blended together under Constantine. The Christmas Tree gambit versus The Day of Jesus Birth is a repackaged Roman Festival....
Many many more cloaked as “religious” (read Made up by men) to backward acknowledge the root of the practice.
What a waste, shouting about a speck in your brothers eye while your eye sockets are boarded over in self righteousness so deep you at time think you know better than God
Read the Bible and decide for yourself, this group think ritualistic stand up, kneel, sit, talk, you talk, on and on I experienced in Catholic Church in Phoenix on Easter Sunday
I was already a regular attendee of a non denominational church, Christ was my savior and I accepted communion during Sunday services I attended regulary. My family traveled to see relatives in Phoenix and we went to the Easter service at their church. To me as a young man it was more like a choreographed group think than the loving atmoshere i knew. When they talked abot Communion I stood up and was ready to accept.
The told me I could NOT as I was not a “MEMBER” of the “Catholic Church”
I was DENIED the free and open profession of my faith in a house of God on a day celebrating his resurrection and it did not matter.
So you, If ANY of you find justification for all of these rules in the Bible and pointing at others about such nonsense is to me nothing more than a guilt trip from the Leader for his OWN purposes which are NOT OF GOD.
Fire away but YOU MUST USE SCRIPTURE, no opinions. Your walk with God and the Spirit within and I with mine and we will seek edification and direction. I will warn you I have had this very same argument with a fellow Minister and she backed down
Save you time
Read about what God does to those who modify or make up what we purport he said
God Bless, I pray he opens Your eyes and Your heart to His way, not your Popes. You have the Holy Spirit, direct link to god. Pick it up and see what he tells u
Love and Light to all
Rev Steve
Did Jesus golf?
I am afraid there are people who spend entirely too much time worrying that someone,somewhere is having fun.Or that we must live as though still in the first century.
“Yoga Is As Yoga Does” Elsa Lanchester and Elvis sings from EASY COME, EASY GO..
Well I can see that you and yoga will never do
Yoga is as yoga does there’s no in-between
Your either with it on the ball or you’ve blown the scene
I can see lookin’ at you, you just can’t get settled
How can I even move, twistin’ like a pretzel
(Yoga is, yoga does)
(There’s no in-between)
(Your either with it all the way) Or you’ve blown the scene
(Or you’ve blown the scene)
Come on come on, untwist my legs
Pull my arms a lot
How did I get so tied up
In this yoga knot
You tell me just how I can take this yoga serious
When all it ever gives to me is a pain in my posteriors
(Yoga is, yoga does)
(There’s no in-between)
(Your either with it all the way) Or you’ve blown the scene
(Or you’ve blown the scene)
Stand upside down on your head, feet against the wall
A simple yoga exercise done by one and all
Now cross your eyes and hold your breath, look just like a clown
Yoga’s sure to catch you if you come falling down
(Yoga is, yoga does)
(There’s no in-between)
(Your either with it all the way) Or you’ve blown the scene
(Or you’ve blown the scene)
(Yoga is, yoga does)
(There’s no in-between)
(Your either with it all the way) Or you’ve blown the scene
(Or you’ve blown the scene)
Let’s not be delusional here. Paganism and its rituals were adopted into Christianity when Europe was converted. There have been brief moments of cleansing, but those have not been successful in eliminating or reversing course. What you see today is simply the icing on the cake.
Please name some Christian rituals with pagan origins. And by Christian, I mean those acts and beliefs that are advocated in Scripture.
“Please name some Christian rituals with pagan origins. And by Christian, I mean those acts and beliefs that are advocated in Scripture.”
Lol, of course those rituals described “in Scripture” are not of pagan origins. I meant the 99% of other rituals — from Christian rituals to Easter rituals that are of pure pagan origin!
So, you are referring to Catholic rituals, then.
I said CHRISTIAN rituals.
Yes
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